Anthology of first-person pieces on the wartime removal and incarceration as part of Greenhaven Press's "History Firsthand" Series.

Synopsis

After a brief introductory overview of the incarceration and its aftermath, the selections are presented in five chapters. Chapter 1, "The Arguments for Relocation," begins with Walter Lippmann's influential syndicated column "
The Fifth Column on the Coast
," and continues with excerpts of testimony before the
Tolan Committee
from California Attorney General
Earl Warren
, San Francisco Mayor Angelo J. Rossi, and Washington state businessman Miller Freeman, along with other short pieces presented at exhibits before the committee. Chapter 2, "The Internment of
Issei
," includes selections from
Yoshiko Uchida
's memoir
Desert Exile
, an excerpt from a 1970s oral history with Amy Uno Ishii, and an account of his arrest by Issei scholar
Yamato Ichihashi
. Chapter 3, "Evacuation," includes excerpts from
Monica Sone
's
Nisei Daughter
,
Charles Kikuchi
's
The Kikuchi Diary
,
Daisuke Kitagawa
's
Issei and Nisei: The Internment Years
, and Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston and James Houston's
Farewell to Manzanar
, as well as an oral history excerpt by
Mary Tsukamoto
. Chapter 4, "Life in the Camps," includes another excerpt from
Farewell to Manzanar
, an essay by Toyo Kawakami, an excerpt from an anonymous oral history taken from Dorothy Thomas's
The Salvage
, and an oral history excerpt by Helen Murao. The final chapter, "Freedom," includes excerpts from
Journey to Topaz
and
Nisei Daughter
. The book concludes with a chronology and a list for further reading. Each chapter begins with an introductory overview of the topic (much of which repeats what is in the introduction) and each individual piece is preceded by a short introduction. The 202-page book includes a few photographs and a map of the
War Relocation Authority
(WRA) concentration camps and the "
assembly centers
."

Additional Information

The "History Firsthand" series is a collection of several books that compile first-person pieces—both of leaders and ordinary people—on various significant events or eras. Other books in the series tackle topics such as the Civil War, Great Depression, Roaring 20s, and the Vietnam War.

The introductory overview and chapter introductions contain a number of errors. The most serious has to do with enemy alien internment. The general introduction states that enemy aliens were interned in one of four camps run by the Department of Justice (page 17), when there were nine such camps, not to mention other camps run by the army. In the introduction to chapter 2, we are again led to believe that only the Justice Department ran these camps (69), even though
Lordsburg
—a camp run by the army—is mentioned later that same page. Other issues: The introduction to chapter 5 claims that as a result of the
Endo Supreme Court ruling
, Japanese Americans were "free to go" (169); though inmates could now return to the West Coast restricted area, they still had to be approved by the WRA before they could leave. In the introduction, it is claimed that most
Tule Lake
inmates were "deported back to Japan after the war" (26); this is doubly wrong, since (a) the vast majority of those at Tule Lake remained in the U.S. after the war and (b) the Nisei—American citizens by birth who made up the majority of Tule Lake inmates—could not by definition be "deported." The authors also include the Arkansas camps in a list of those in "barren desert areas" (21) and claim that the Tolan Committee was created in February 1942 "to investigate the threat of enemy alien activity on the West Coast" (32); it was formed in 1940 and its focus was to investigate defense migration.

Related Articles

For More Information

Tabuchi,DeAnn. Review in
School Library Journal
, Apr. 2001, 160. ["The continuity is choppy, due to the fact that some of the chapters are excerpts from longer works.... A comprehensive overview."]

Learn more in the Densho Encyclopedia, a free on-line resource covering the key concepts, people, events, and organizations that played a role in the forced removal and incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II.

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Learn more in the Densho Encyclopedia, a free on-line resource covering the key concepts, people, events, and organizations that played a role in the forced removal and incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II.

This material is based upon work assisted by a grant from the U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the U.S. Department of the Interior.

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The Resource Guide to Media on the Japanese American Removal and Incarceration is a free project of Densho. Our mission is to preserve the testimonies of Japanese Americans who were unjustly incarcerated during World War II before their memories are extinguished. We offer these irreplaceable firsthand accounts, coupled with historical images and teacher resources, to explore principles of democracy, and promote equal justice for all.